District/State Administrator
SB 5248/HB 1710
Appropriates $27 million in state funds and $97 million in federal funds for for matching grants to districts for high quality tutoring and rigorous extended learning programs.
Funding for High-Impact Tutoring
This brief provides an overview of available funding for high-impact tutoring programs beyond Covid-19 relief funding (ESSER).
Many streams of funding, on their own or braided together, can pay for high-impact tutoring in U.S. schools.
A Virtual Tutoring Program Boosted Early Literacy Skills. New Research Shows How
Intensive, high-dose tutoring can boost early reading skills, even in a virtual format, according to a new experimental study.
Researchers from the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University tracked the reading progress of about 2,000 K-2 students in a dozen Texas charter schools. Half of the students were randomly assigned to attend class normally, while half received intensive remote tutoring for part of the school day, in small groups, through the nonprofit group OnYourMark, which serves K-2 students in seven states.
2023-24 Snapshot of State Tutoring Policies
As schools, districts, and states work to address the student needs following the pandemic, many turned to high-impact tutoring, a research-based approach to providing individualized instruction to students. In fact, thirty-seven percent of public schools reported providing “high-dosage” tutoring on a federal school pulse panel survey in December 2022. In addition, many states have implemented or are exploring policies to increase access to high-impact tutoring. This brief explores the tutoring policy landscape at the state level as of November 2023.
Greensboro tutoring collaborative aims to reverse pandemic learning losses
In the aftermath of COVID-19, learning losses are among the most devastating, persistent consequences of the pandemic. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were disproportionately impacted, creating both a learning and inequality crisis. Studies from the California School Boards Association and University of Chicago hail high-impact tutoring as a key solution for both issues.
In Guilford County Schools, implementation of high-impact tutoring has produced impressive results. All student groups improved their test proficiency scores this year.
Academic Recovery: Terms to Know
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s research arm, high-dose tutoring is the most effective—though often the most expensive.
The National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford University center that studies effective tutoring, finds that effective high-dose tutoring programs require:
- Tutoring integrated into the school day to increase tutor-teacher coordination and avoid transportation or time problems for students.
- Targeting students based on academic need rather than requiring parents to opt into services.
- Budgeting services for at least three to five days a week for extended periods of time.
- Differentiated tutoring based on particular student needs and skills.
- Data-gathering and progress-monitoring, particularly when schools work with outside tutoring providers.
Tutoring’s New Game: Better Academic Results Yield Bigger Payoffs for Providers
With research showing that far fewer students took advantage of online tutoring than districts expected, the outcomes-based model is one way to ensure districts use public funds wisely. “In education, we can pay for things a long time before we realize no children are participating in it,” Miller said.
Integrating High-Impact Tutoring with Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
Districts across the nation use Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to target appropriate supports for each student. High-impact tutoring is the most effective research-backed academic support – consistently demonstrating from six months to over two years of learning gains for students across grade levels and content areas in a single year of tutoring.
Districts that have chosen to integrate high-impact tutoring with MTSS are finding that embedding this highly effective support into the fabric of their schools improves student outcomes, reduces implementation challenges, improves instructional coherence, and streamlines operations.